Cool Heads in Crisis: HMS Venerable, 1804 The Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars locked Britain and France into almost twenty-two years of continuous warfare from 1793 and conflict at sea was a critical part of this. What is surprising however is how few ships were actually destroyed in combat. Whether in large fleet actions or in “single ship” [...]

The Imperial German Navy – sketches of life on board ship 1902 Some time ago I stumbled on German publication of 1902 entitled “Germany’s Honour on the World’s Oceans” (Deutschlands Ehr im Weltenmeer) by a Vice-Admiral von Werner. The sub-title is “The development of the German Navy and sketches of life on board.” The illustrations, not [...]

The Twilight of the Pre-Dreadnoughts and the Sinking of HMS Goliath, 1915 At the start of World War I all major navies had significant numbers of pre-dreadnought battleships which, though in many cases only eight or ten years old, had been rendered wholly obsolete by the commissioning of HMS Dreadnought in 1905. This, the first turbine-driven, all-big [...]